Ireland fines Meta 17 million euros for data protection errors

Dublin, 15 Mar The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), the main data protection regulator in the European Union (EU), reported on Tuesday that it has imposed a fine of 17 million euros on Facebook's parent Meta. The sanction is related to “a series of 12 data breaches” that occurred over a six-month period, between June and December 2018, the DPC explained in a statement today. The research carried out by this body concluded that Meta had not “implemented the appropriate technical and organizational measures” that would have allowed it to demonstrate that “the security systems it used” during that period served to protect the data of community users. Last November, the DPC imposed a fine of 225 million euros on WhatsApp Ireland for violating data protection regulations, while it is conducting several investigations into other companies in the Meta group. This was the largest fine issued by the DPC and the second highest imposed in the community bloc, after the Luxembourg National Commission for Data Protection (CNPD) sanctioned Amazon in July 2021 with 746 million euros. Both fines were related to non-compliance with European privacy regulations contained in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). CHIEF ha/jm/ads